Valley truckers fret over clean exhaust cost

Thousands of San Joaquin Valley truck drivers are facing a Jan. 1 deadline to complete expensive upgrades to their rigs, prompting air-quality officials to free up millions of dollars in assistance.

Alex Breitler

Thousands of San Joaquin Valley truck drivers are facing a Jan. 1 deadline to complete expensive upgrades to their rigs, prompting air-quality officials to free up millions of dollars in assistance.

The impending deadline is part of a controversial state rule to reduce diesel pollution from large trucks. The rule was delayed in 2010 because of the crumbling economy, but now it is once more lurching forward.

The concern now, in particular, is for drivers who own just a single truck, or perhaps two or three trucks. They lack the financial backing of a large company but must nevertheless spend $15,000 to $20,000 to install new filters in their trucks.

In some cases, the cost to comply may be more than the value of the truck, officials with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District said in August. The $7 million the district is making available would help owners not merely to retrofit but to outright replace their trucks, which the state rule requires anyway by 2023.

In a staff report, district officials said they were concerned that without additional financial assistance for truckers, the rate of compliance after Jan. 1 would be low. This could have a devastating impact on truckers and their customers, they said, while failing to clean up the trucks themselves, which are a primary cause of the Valley's pollution problem.

The district's assistance is welcome, said Michael Shaw, a spokesman for the California Trucking Association. There are about 20,000 small truck fleets in the Valley, perhaps 15,000 of which comprise just one truck.

"This deadline is really coming home to roost," Shaw said. "It will have a significant impact on the trucking industry, and we do anticipate there will be a fair number of owners and operators who are going to be out of business come Jan. 1."

Those that stay in business will surely pass on costs to the businesses they serve, Shaw said. That, in turn, will increase costs to the public for everyday items shipped by truck.

Karen Caesar, a spokeswoman for the California Air Resources Board, said the state is doing everything it can to communicate the upcoming deadline to truck owners. She also cited the need of cleaning the air.

A 2008 study by California State University, Fullerton, found that meeting federal clean-air standards would prevent 110 premature deaths each year in San Joaquin County.